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David Armano of “Logic + Emotion,” the quintessential web 2.0 blog, has a great post today about what he calls reducing the “signal to noise” ratio in his life for 2008. He cites an example of someone leaving Facebook due to the unwanted complexity it has added to his life.  The burden of the “noise” outweighed the value of the “signal” he was able (or willing) to consume.

This is precisely why I do not have a MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter account. I love how the social and information revolutions have dramatically impacted the way in which people can communicate with each other, but the information and relational overload that I experience at times leaves me wanting to unplug my life from the constant din of information and to return to a slower pace. I did this last weekend while camping with some very close friends; it was wonderful.

Here’s the deal: human beings were never designed, whether you believe they evolved or were created, to maintain so many relationships as are possible in our current situation. Excluding the past 90-100 years of the history of humanity, people more or less could only maintain relationships within their geographical boundaries. Then the telegraph, telephone, radio, and television allowed individuals to maintain their social networks over distances, but with the exception of some uber-geek Ham Radio operators, no one could create a new social network that didn’t directly correlate with their geographical location.

I have a hard enough time keeping up with the people in my life that I can actually see and touch, let alone maintaining meaningful relationships with those I care about the most. I like LinkedIn’s signal to noise ratio, because it’s a less intrusive networking tool and not something that really encumbers me with too much data.

Is this approach right for everyone? No way. But we each have to choose what is most important us, and use our “bandwidth” for information appropriately. I’m a pretty outgoing guy, but I’d much rather have 10 real relationships with people I can truly connect with than to waste my time trading micro-bits of information with 100 people.

What works for you?